Another phishing email takes on Apple themes
According to MacRumors, yet another Apple-styled phishing email is making the rounds. This one seems to be a lot more insidious than another phishing email that circulated last week. While the earlier email had several aspects to it that were dead giveaways it was fake, this new email could very easily trip up anyone who doesn't pay attention to the latest Apple news. The "from" line says the email comes from Apple.com (noreply@apple.com), lending an air of credulity to it that the earlier email lacked. The message claims to be concerned with the debut of the iPhone 5, and it contains images pulled from various sources around the Web alongside some copy written in a very Apple-y style.
Our readers will no doubt recognize these images as fake right away, but they might appear plausible to people who don't follow the news very closely. As such, this email is potentially more dangerous than the one that was circulating last week, particularly since an inviting "check it out" link downloads a Windows executable file that could contain just about anything.
It probably seems obvious to us Apple fans, but for everyone else it bears mentioning: Apple doesn't announce new products via email like this, especially not flagship products such as the iPhone. For major product launches, Apple puts on a keynote event that gets wide media coverage; for minor product refreshes, sites like this one get the word out even when Apple doesn't draw much attention to them itself. If you get an email like this that claims to be about the latest and greatest Apple product, but no one else on the internet has discussed it at all, don't bother clicking anything and just delete the message.
Better yet, until this latest round of phishing emails gets monkey-stomped into the digital dirt, it's probably a good idea to avoid clicking on anything in any unsolicited messages that appear to be from Apple. If you really want to see what's new on the Apple Store, the URL is very easy to remember: store.apple.com.
